Musk plans to countersue Twitter to scrap $44 bn deal: Report
Darpan News Desk IANS, 19 Jul, 2022 12:12 PM
San Francisco, July 19 (IANS) Tech billionaire Elon Musk has reportedly planned to file a counter-lawsuit against micro-blogging site Twitter to scrap a $44 billion acquisition deal.
Musk's lawyers are angling to push a Delaware Court of Chancery judge to grant them more time and power to gather information about bots on Twitter, citing sources, The New York Post reported on late Monday.
A protracted legal battle could also potentially drag down the company's stock, giving Musk more leverage to renegotiate Twitter's sale price. The news comes less than a week after the microblogging site sued Tesla CEO in Delaware, accusing the mogul of agreeing to buy the site then attempting to "trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away".
Twitter's lawyers are pushing for a four-day trial starting in September, while Musk wants the trial to open no earlier than February 2023.
"Twitter's sudden request for warp speed after two months of foot-dragging and obfuscation is its latest tactic to shroud the truth about spam accounts long enough to railroad defendants into closing," Musk's legal team wrote.Recently, Musk officially pulled out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase the microblogging site.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk's team claimed he was terminating the deal because Twitter was in "material breach" of their agreement and had made "false and misleading" statements during negotiations.
The platform has claimed that it is suspending nearly 1 million spam accounts a day.
A recent report indicated that Twitter lawyers from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz law firms were preparing for a long-drawn court battle after Musk filed paperwork with the US SEC to exit the acquisition deal.
Twitter announced late on Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at nearly $44 billion.
The University of British Columbia says in a news release that its spinoff company Carbin Minerals has been awarded a so-called XPrize for technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The reception was hosted by Jay Minhas, President of Elegant Developments featuring Government officials, BC Colleges and Universities, Land Developers, and community leaders in attendance. Esther Wojcicki, is the mother of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe, and Janet Wojcicki, Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF Medical School.
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced a new $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund to prepare a skilled workforce for high-paying, high-growth jobs in fields like data analytics, IT support, project management and user experience design.
The company said that it developed the Messenger Kids Pledge and the Pledge Planets activities in close partnership with experts in online safety, child development, and children's media.
The name change was announced at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference on Thursday. Facebook, which now goes by Meta is based on the sci-fi term metaverse, to describe its vision for working and playing in a virtual world.
